Spotless (9 page)

“Which one of you is going to pilot?”

My question was probably nearly incomprehensible, since I had stumbled on a vending machine in the hangar a few minutes earlier and had been busy stuffing myself with candy bars since. Dinner was on March, so I had made sure to spend his change down to the last cent.

“None of us, honey. Your pilot will be here real soon,” Paulie said, sorting papers on his desk.

March had been silent for the past twenty minutes. Was he maybe
nervous about the whole plan? Cutting deals, putting clients in the passenger seat, juggling two jobs. It was becoming clear that none of this fit his usual modus operandi, and I couldn’t help but worry that we might both be making a huge mistake. Gobbling down my third Mounds, I turned to our host.

“What sort of pilot shows up in the middle of the night to fly random people to Europe anyway?” I asked Paulie while folding a piece of candy wrapper carefully—God, I hoped March wasn’t getting to me with his OCD thing!

He shrugged as if it was obvious. “The sort who needs the money.”

“Why?”

“He . . . he—” Paulie scratched his head. He seemed suddenly very embarrassed.

March came to the rescue. “He’s doing meth. Terribly expensive.”

I stared at him, aghast. “Our pilot does
drugs
?”

“Don’t worry, it has no impact on his skills whatsoever.”

He looked relaxed enough, so I decided to trust him on this. I wasn’t truly scared of flying, anyway; I just thought about plane crashes a lot. And by a lot, I mean that I usually listened to black box recordings on YouTube the night before taking a flight. Nothing like a French pilot shrieking “Shit! We’re going down!” in horror before crashing an entire Airbus in the Atlantic Ocean, children.

The sound of an engine echoed outside of the hangar, and when the guy slid open the large metal door, I scanned every inch of him, searching for any sign that he might be unfit for the job. He was a relatively short, friendly-looking man in his forties: messy black hair, brown eyes, wearing a blue flight jacket and carrying a small suitcase.

March had been right: so far, I could find no evidence of his addiction affecting his behavior in any significant way. He didn’t even look tired.

“Nick, man! How’s life?” Paulie was already on his way to greet our pilot, and I decided to do the same.

Walking to him, I extended my hand. “My name is Island. Thank you for coming so late.”

His handshake was firm and warm; I relaxed a little and allowed a tentative smile to stir my lips. Within seconds, though, I felt March behind my back, pulling me away gently.

“We’ll let you get ready, Nick. Right, Island?” His voice was smooth as always, but it was an order rather than an invitation, really.

Nick winced. “Okay. Always a pleasure, March.”

Watching him stroll toward our plane, I felt something swell in my heart, like an urge to do things right because my time was probably running short and I no longer wanted to miss a single opportunity in what was left of my life. Freeing myself from March’s grasp, I took a few steps outside the hangar in the cold night and called him back. “Nick! I just wanted to tell you . . . Please don’t buy drugs with the money from this flight. Do it for me. I’m sure you’re better than that!”

I was on the verge of tears, Paulie looked petrified, March had been performing a slow face-palm as I spoke, and Nick looked . . . mad?

Walking back toward us, he pointed an angry finger in our host’s direction. “Paul, you really need to stop doing that!”

“Nick, man . . . I’m just trying to help! And this one was March’s idea anyway!” Paulie whined.

The culprit stepped back and raised his hands, indicating that he wanted nothing to do with their dispute.

I was completely lost. “You’re not a meth addict?”

“Jesus . . . Of course not!” Nick replied, rolling his eyes. “And I don’t have gambling debts; I don’t owe three hundred grand to the mob; I don’t need to fund my teen porn start-up—” he went on, shaking his head, “I just have a family to feed!”

I turned to Paulie and March, Nick’s indignation rapidly fueling my own. “What is this about? Why did you tell me he was a junkie?”

“It’s . . . I’m just trying to protect his reputation. Guy married a
Mormon gal who popped him eight kids. You know . . . Don’t sound good in our line of business!”

March silently nodded his agreement.

I was outraged. “How can you two keep lying to me like this? This one is even
worse
than the meth one! It’s not even funny!”

“But it’s true.”

I looked back to Nick. “What . . . You really have
eight
kids?”

“Yeah, why else would I fly on my days off?” He shrugged.

No wonder Nick had looked so normal in the first place: he almost was. I was especially disappointed in Paulie. I expected nothing from March—obviously—but he, on the opposite, had sounded like someone one could trust. Well, one couldn’t.

Sighing, I went back into the hangar, closely followed by my chaperone. As Bonnie Tyler used to say, “Where have all the good men gone?”

EIGHT

The Chest Hair

“He was absolute perfection: a smoldering batter of pure maleness, baked by the sun into a golden, smoking-hot beefcake.”

—Terry Robs,
Glazed by the Cook

Our plane’s cabin wasn’t the tiny space I had first imagined it would be; far from it, in fact. It was pretty spacious and even impressive with its large and comfy beige leather passenger seats, two long sofas facing each other, and wooden inserts that gave the interior a lavish touch.

The first two hours of the flight were spent in tense silence, March and I facing each other like cowboys before a duel. Although I was dying to explore the aircraft and open every single cabinet around me, I kept my hands locked on my lap. My earlier experiment in his car had taught me all I needed to know about disrupting his immediate environment.

Truth is, there was a question hanging in the air—well, at least in my air. I leaned forward a little, forcing myself to look at him in the eyes. “March . . . did you ever meet my mother . . . when working for that Board thing?”

His brow jerked up before he composed himself and gave me his usual poker smile. “I never worked with her. But she did possess a solid reputation before her death. No killer, but rather the type of professional you’d hire to secure valuables or intel with minimal disturbance.”

“I guess I’m relieved to hear she wasn’t . . . like you, but I still can’t believe she was a thief. She was honest, you know,” I countered.

“Personal moral standards have nothing to do with jobs like ours. I pay my taxes down to the last cent, and I’m sure your mother did as well. Yet she was breaking into embassies, and I play Krampus for naughty drug lords,” March replied dryly.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I almost forgot you’re a good citizen who doesn’t speed on the highway. The kneecapping is just a
hobby
, right?” I knew I was playing with fire, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to snap at someone to ease my stress, and he was the only one around.

His eyes narrowed. “Enough.”

“Or what? You want to talk about something else? How about this? What’s my price tag, March? The pay must be good, right? How much for all this? To spy on me, to search my apartment, and even pay for a trip to France in a private jet?”

“How much I get paid is none of your business.”

He almost sounded angry. Was the money not good enough? Or was it because he had been forced to let Antonio go and give that Somoza guy a refund?

I remained silent for a while, struggling to cool down before probing again. “Will you let me go? If I help you find that diamond, will you send me back home?”

“Yes.”

For the first time in twenty-four hours, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Was he a man of his word, though? Hard to tell, especially since I had already heard and seen a lot more than I should have, and taking me out of the country seemed like yet another serious breach of
his “partnership” with Creepy-hat. I wondered if things were so easy for him. “Say . . . hypothetically, don’t you risk getting in trouble if you let me go? Like you’re betraying the family?”

He ducked his head, as if to conceal his eyes. Was I onto something? “Island, I’m not tied to any family. I sometimes work for the Board, and when I do, I only answer to its head, the Queen. As long as the Queen is satisfied with my services, anyone else’s opinion is irrelevant.”

I thought it sounded great on paper, but I wondered if his employer saw it that way too. “If you say so. But don’t come complaining if you end up inside an industrial meat grinder.”

He let out a warm, throaty laugh. Damn, I really liked his laugh. Too bad he was nothing more than a callous hit man with some manners. “Don’t worry. I enjoy a reputation that allows me some leeway.”

I wasn’t sure why, but his carelessness made me a little sad. “You’re an arrogant asshat, and it’s going to get you killed someday.”

His gaze turned pensive. “Your concern is very touching. It’s rather unusual coming from a client.”

I felt my ears heat up again at this oddly turned compliment. My own fate should have been my priority right now, not the way he did his job. My reply was halfway between an embarrassed mumble and a yawn. “I don’t care about you, March. All I want is to survive this mess.”

“Understood.”

His calm words are the last thing I remember. I was struggling more and more to keep my eyes open and eventually lost the fight.

I woke up in France. Well, in the French sky anyway. As I opened my eyes, bleak weather could be seen through the plane’s windows, and Nick made a captain’s announcement that it was past ten a.m. local time
and we would be landing in half an hour or so. My seat was in sleep position. I was wrapped in some blue cover . . . and March was gone.

My eyes searched the cabin, and I noticed that the lavatory door was wide open. Alerted by the sound of water running, I decided to get up and make sure he wasn’t getting ready to waterboard me like they do in Guantanamo. I was stopped by a sharp pain in my right wrist and the impossibility of moving my arm any further.
Someone
had handcuffed me again—perhaps worried that I might try to strangle him in his sleep. I sighed in frustration as my eyes scanned the long black chain. The other end of the cuff had been locked under the seat, leaving no means of escape.

Undeterred, I bent to my right side as far as I could in a poorly designed maneuver meant to get a glimpse of what was going on inside that damn lavatory. It was a complete disaster. I ended up falling from the seat and hitting my head on the floor in the process. My arm still tied to the seat but now painfully twisted, I groaned in mild annoyance as I raised my eyes to the lavatory’s entrance. March was indeed there, shirtless and getting ready to shave. His jaw and chin covered in shaving foam, an old-fashioned safety razor still in hand, he took in my undignified position and arched a questioning eyebrow.

I swallowed whatever was left of my pride. “Could you do something about the cuff?”

He looked down on me—literally—and merely resumed his activities. “No, Island. I won’t help you, because, if I do, you won’t learn anything.”

It was almost surreal, the way he was able to perform his morning routine undistracted as I lay sprawled on the aisle’s gray carpet with pleading eyes, only a few feet away from him. I gave up with a dejected sigh, resigning myself to wait until he was done. Surely he wouldn’t step over me to get his coffee, right? Glancing up at him again, I inhaled sharply and felt my cheeks heat up a little. He had shifted his position
to get a better view of himself in the small mirror as he shaved and, in turn, was giving me a much better view of his bare torso.

I wasn’t sure I liked what I saw at first. March had a body that fit his choice of career, and there was nothing wrong with that. It’s just that I wasn’t used to seeing that sort of thing. To the best of my knowledge, muscular, ripped males belonged exclusively on TV and in sports magazines. I had sometimes met guys who looked like they worked out a lot; however, overly conservative social boundaries had restrained me from tearing their shirts open in public to check the goods. So, shape-wise, this was actually my first close encounter with a male body that looked . . . well, that fit.